


Die fast, live long

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Blood and Gore, Exhaustion, Gen, Injury Recovery, Medical Experimentation, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Sleepy Cuddles, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:35:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25465618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Andy could tell that something had changed them in that lab, something they would probably carry with them throughout the rest of their immortal lives. She could see it in their eyes, in the heavy set of their shoulders, in the tautness of their jaws.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 22
Kudos: 288





	Die fast, live long

**Author's Note:**

> I just watched The Old Guard, and it was so good! This isn't a great fic, but I like it for what it is. I need to watch the movie again because almost everyone was home today and I didn't really get to watch it the way I wanted to, so I'll need to do a second pass. I have so many thoughts about these characters that I can't accurately put into words. Nicky's death at the end was... super gruesome?? And I needed it to be addressed. Anyway. This fic is shitty. But I hope you enjoy it despite how bad it is, and that it's not too... out of character?? That sucks the most.
> 
> (This was actually inspired by the scene after Joe kills Keane where he's sitting there next to his body all exhausted and sad and I thought 'wow he looked pretty fucked')

When Andy watched Joe snap that mans neck, tossing him over his shoulder like discarded clothing and slamming him on the ground so his neck bent like rubber, she knew that something had gone terribly, horribly wrong.

He had sat there for a moment, kneeling on the ground with his head down and his face stricken, breathing hard and forced to support his weight on his arm, and she realized that in the last few centuries, she had never seen him look quite so… exhausted. He had stumbled off, gabbing Keane’s gun on the way out, and Andy had watched him go with her heart in her chest.

In the car, she had to endure Booker sitting in the front seat with her, though they didn’t speak at all. He stared out the window, hands fisted in his jacket folded over his lap. Nile sat in the backseat, asleep with her head against the window, her body exhausted after having to heal itself from such gruesome injuries in such a short amount of time. Beside her, Joe and Nicky were sleeping against each other, entwined together, Joe curled up in Nicky’s lap, Nicky with his hands fisted gently in Joe’s hair, moving across his temple even in sleep. In the rear-view mirror, Andy could see the slowly drying smear of blood on the window behind Nicky’s head, and the gunpowder that dusted his burnt lips and chin. She didn’t want to think about what that meant, or when that happened. Regardless, Joe had his hand clutching Nicky’s shirt like he never wanted to let him go.

They looked away when Joe and Nicky stripped off at the beach and bathed in the ocean, washing their shirts in the surf. While Nile and Booker saved tables and ordered drinks, Andy glanced over just in time to watch Nicky disappear beneath the waves and Joe run his hands through his hair, roughly and gently at the same time, as the water around them grew dark with old blood. When Nicky reappeared and wiped a hand down his wet, blood-streaked face, Joe pulled him close and cradled his hand on the back of Nicky’s head, where that bloodied patch once was. She glanced away when they pressed together for a kiss that seemed more than just a simple peck on the lips. There was a desperation to it that she didn't think she had the right to see.

Over the next few days, everything was… subdued. They left Booker behind on the beach. Nile did most of the talking. Andy had exhaustion seeping into every bone in her old body. Nicky and Joe never spent more than a few minutes away from each other and seemed attached by the hip more than normal. Joe’s artworks, once bright and whimsical and beautiful, took on a darker, more twisted tone, no less beautiful but warped, and more often than not he stopped half-way before the image could truly take shape. Nicky’s face twisted into something hard, cruel, and while there was always that kindness behind his eyes, the same kindness that had been there for centuries, his face had gone cold like stone.

Andy didn’t ask, so they didn’t tell. Nile looked like she wanted to, over the days that passed, but also seemed to know that if they weren’t talking about it, there was probably a reason. She spent a lot of time outside, looking at the photo of her mother and her brother. She had taken the sim card out and crushed it beneath her boot, so there was no temptation to call them. All she had were her memories of them. Andy thought that she was giving them all space, but she also thought that she needed space herself. They were at a strange in-between phase that they hadn’t settled in since Booker joined them 200 years ago. Andy was mortal now, and her entire existence had changed, and she had to figure out what that meant. Booker was gone, and there was the very real possibility that she would never see her again hanging heavy on her mind. Nile was new, and she was learning, and she needed Andy to teach her everything she knew with the time she had left, however long that may be. Joe and Nicky… well. Andy could tell that something had changed them in that lab, something they would probably carry with them throughout the rest of their immortal lives. She could see it in their eyes, in the heavy set of their shoulders, in the tautness of their jaws.

It was late when any of them finally spoke about it, and a good many days later, with Nile on the couch in the hotel and Joe curled up and passed out in the safety of the circle of Nicky’s arms, wrapped around him like precious bonds, and Andy sat in an armchair on the far side of the room. “You know,” Nicky said into the darkness, and Andy knew without a doubt that he was talking directly to her. “I did not think it possible, but I miss Booker already. I do not forgive him, not yet, but… I miss him something painful.”

“Yeah,” Andy said, and even she could hear how faint her voice sounded. “Me too. I guess I’m just sick of losing people. We gained Nile, but lost Booker, and we’re back where we started.”

“Even worse so,” Nicky said. “Nile is not Booker, could never be Booker. And Quynh is still lost below the waves. We are two men down. Nile, though she is wonderful, will never make up for that no matter how hard she tries.”

She glanced at him in the darkness. He was sat in a corner, having joined Joe hours earlier when he was sketching in his book before exhaustion took him and he curled up in Nicky’s lap to sleep. He was partially hidden by the couch Nile slept on and Joe’s curls, but Andy could see the haunted look in his eyes, the deep lines on his ageless face, the way his body was loose-limbed from exhaustion yet tense from stress at the same time. Booker would know what to say, but Booker wasn’t here, probably would never be again, so it was up to Andy, who had never been particularity good at this sort of thing. “We never spoke about the lab.”

“Eh,” Nicky dismissed it. “We don’t have to. It was a long time ago.”

“It was less than a week ago, Nicky.”

When Nicky didn’t answer right away, Andy shifted in her chair to get comfortable and waited silently so as not to push him too hard. “Well,” he said eventually. “I suppose the saying is true. Time _does_ fly when you’re having fun.”

Andy couldn’t help but snort. “We haven’t exactly been having much fun lately.”

“Nile is very fun,” Nicky countered, and Andy had to agree. 

Sighing, Andy rested her head against the old leather of the armchair. Nile made a gurgling noise in her sleep, a deep chesty sound, and Andy knew what she was dreaming of. “Tell me about the lab, Nicky,” it wasn’t an order, but it carried the same weight as if it were. “I want to know.”

She could see Nicky musing it over, chewing at his lips, before he glanced down at Joe, asleep against him, defenceless and trusting Nicky to keep him safe, and tightened his hold on him. “I’m not sure you want to know,” his voice was too airy, too thin. “There was a time when I wanted to rip them apart with my bare hands.”

“That bad, huh?” Andy, more so than anyone other than Joe, knew exactly what that meant.

“The standard crazy scientist torture fare,” Nicky said. “Stick things in you just to see how much it would hurt. That sort of crazy,” he made a sound in his chest. “Within the first five minutes of us getting into Merrick’s hands, he stabbed Joe in the back, in a very literal sense. Wanted physical proof. Then he…” he waved his hand in a hopeless gesture. “I don’t know what he did then. We couldn’t move, could hardly breathe, and he had us carted off towards the lab.”

Andy didn’t want to continue, but knew logically she had a duty to her team. “Did they torture you then?”

“Not right away,” Nicky shrugged, and he sounded so indifferent that Andy was a little surprised. But she knew better than almost anyone that it was just an act, and that when she was asleep and he was alone with nothing but his thoughts and Joe in his arms, he would let himself feel it more solidly when it all became reality. “They took samples, first, and put the pieces in little plastic containers close enough to reach out and touch, slivers and pieces and chunks of us on that little metal table. But while it was painful, it was relatively harmless. Then they stuck things in us and wanted to see how long it took to heal, or if it would heal at all with the object still inside. Joe died once or twice on that bed. But I suppose they must have gotten bored, to move on from scientists to sadists so quickly.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you, Nicky,” Andy said, and she meant it. “I’m sorry that you and Joe ever had to go through that.”

“What can you do?” Nicky dismissed her. “You had no idea what was going to happen. None of us did. You could not have stopped it. Neither of us blames you. Besides, and I believe I speak for Joe too, but we would much rather it be us than fresh-faced Nile and newly-mortal you.”

Sighing, Andy curled up as much as her wounds would allow and rested her head against the chair. “How much of you did they manage to sample?”

“Enough,” Nicky’s answer was definite and dreaded. “We were there for two days. They got more than enough. Now we will just have to wait and see what they do with it if anything at all.”

“I’m sorry that I let you get into that situation, Nicky,”

“Boss,” Nicky’s voice was somehow sharp yet gentle, just like him. “Don’t do this to yourself. You couldn’t have done anything. If anything, we should have been paying more attention. We were… sloppy. We knew Copley was after us, and we spent the night watching the football and reading when we should have been paying attention. If anyone is to blame, here, it is us.”

Neither of them mentioned Booker, or how not only was the whole thing his fault, but it was his whole idea, that he personally orchestrated the design of their downfall. That the only reason Joe and Nicky were taken in the first place was so Book could stay back and lure the rest of them to the labs to join them. Neither of them mentioned it because the thought still hurt and festered and caused them more pain than they wanted to endure, especially after everything they had been through lately.

Before Andy could get too lost in her thoughts and her grief, Nicky broke the silence with a voice that sounded tired and raw, like too many hours had passed of him screaming himself hoarse, though Andy knew that he had more self-control than to let the others see that. “The labs were… terrible. And what they did to us more so. And I do not know how long it will be until I forgive Booker. Maybe it’ll be the whole one-hundred years, or maybe it’ll only take five when the pain of missing him becomes too great. But we shouldn’t dwell of it now. That was long ago, in the past now, and we have much bigger things to worry about than Merrick and his labs.”

“Alright,” she knew what he was really asking, really requesting of her from the bottom of his heart, though he didn’t have the heart to say directly. But they had known each other for countless centuries, and she knew what they were wanting even when things went unsaid. “May I ask one more question, though?”

“Of course."

She thought back to the penthouse, with her and Nile taking out the armed guards with a single bullet to the forehead while Joe took his time to personally, mercilessly beat Keane to death with his bare fists and break his neck on the polished, blood-slick floor. An unusually brutal and extended way to take him out. “Why did Joe take the time to beat Keane to death instead of just shooting him?”

Nicky looked about to answer but was cut short by a sleepy, grumpy voice, muffled by his shirt. “Because he put a gun in Nicky’s mouth and blew his brains out all over the floor,” Joe responded, less heat there than she would have expected, and realized now she had an explanation to the blood adhered to the back of Nicky’s head during the drive away from that… terrible place

“I thought you were asleep,” Nicky made a gentle sound as he carded his fingers through Joe’s curls. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You didn’t wake me,” Joe muttered, but even Andy knew it wasn’t the whole truth. “Enough talk about Merrick and the labs and the torture and _Booker_.” Booker's name was said with more malice than the rest of the list. “Let’s talk about what we’re going to do next instead.”

“Not tonight,” Andy shook her head. “Tomorrow, maybe. But tonight we should rest. The world can wait for us this time. It’ll all be there tomorrow.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Joe extracted himself from Nicky’s safe hold and pulled away, blinking around at the dim room. “What are we doing on the floor?”

Nicky shrugged. “You feel asleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

On the couch, Nile stirred again, and the room fell silent to gauge whether she would wake up. When she was silent again, Joe stood and offered Nicky a hand to lift him up beside him. “Let’s go to bed. It’s late, and we’re both tired. Join me?”

Huffing out a laugh, Nicky let Joe slowly lead him towards one of the bedrooms. “It would be my honour,” he sniggered, and Joe’s laugh was reserved but no less genuine. He turned back over his shoulder just in time to send Andy a friendly, comforting smile, a familiar one that she really needed to see after the craziness of the last few weeks. “Goodnight, Boss.”

“Goodnight boys,” Andy said, and when Nicky turned back around to follow Joe into the bedroom, she kept her eyes fixated on the back of his head, no longer slick with his own blood and brain matter, the strands now perfectly settled as it had been for a century, and kept that in her sight until the door shut behind them and she was alone once again, this time more palpably than she had been in a long time. She spared a thought for her missing companion, abandoned somewhere in France, and wondered if he dreamt of them as she did of him. “Goodnight, Book.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, my whole family is Italian, and I kinda tried to write Nicky the way my grandparents talk? Like, they're fluent in English and all, but they take pauses and don't say the whole words (is/its) so I just tried to base it on them, you know? There are probably so many things I got wrong in this fic, but hopefully, that isn't one of them! I also couldn't get away with some things because Grammarly hated it, but I tried my best haha.


End file.
